CNET Update

Amazon, Disney and Dropbox increase cloud coverage

Amazon Prime comes with a new storage perk, Disney expands movie streaming to more devices, and Microsoft teams up with Dropbox. Meanwhile, emoji are getting more diverse skin tones.

2:52 / 4 November 2014

Transcript

[MUSIC]
Amazon Prime just got another perk and Emojis are getting more diverse.
I'm Bridget Carey and this is your CNET update.
[MUSIC]
Amazon has sweetened its Prime subscription service as members now get the added perk of unlimited photo storage.
The Amazon Cloud Drive Photo Zap gives everyone 5 GB of free online store to back up their photos and videos.
Takes it on their mobile device.
But Prime members have unlimited photo storage.
You can set it to back up photos automatically when you're connected to WiFi or you can manually select which photos you want to back up.
We're seeing online storage become more accessible.
Take Microsoft, for instance.
It already has its own photo-backup app with one drive.
But Microsoft has now also partnering with the storage service, Dropbox.
Dropbox can now be accessed from Microsoft Office and vice versa.
You can edit Office files from inside the Dropbox mobile app.
One downside to using cloud services is that sometimes it can get a bit messy keeping track of which service has which of your files, especially when you're dealing with digital movies because not all devices work with every app.
Well, Disney is making it a tad easier.
Disney partnered with Apple and Google so that if you buy a Disney movie, you can stream it from any Apple or Android device.
The key here is that you'll need the app called Disney Movies Anywhere.
You buy movies inside that app or bring in Disney movies that you purchased from iTunes or Google Play.
Now if you bought a physical DVD or Blu-ray, that counts too.
The app will let you redeem the digital version of that movie.
Switching gears to mobile, Google released a new calendar app for Android users.
To keep you more organized, it will automatically turn some alerts from your Gmail into calendar events.
For example, if you received a flight confirmation email, that instantly turns into a calendar reminder.
For now, this app is only for people with the newest version of Android, called Lollipop.
But in the coming weeks, it'll roll out to older versions of android, and there is an iPhone version in the works, and there is an update coming to the world of emojis.
You know, those little cartoon images you can insert into texts.
Well, there is a group that manages emoji characters, and that group has said it is working to offer more diversity to human characters.
Right now, most human emojis appear to be white people.
But an update will be able to generate a range of skin tones.
On your phone, you can just maybe hold down an icon to pull up a menu to pick a color.
But you'll have to wait until 2015 for more diversity in your emojis, and after that, Apple and Google will still have to update their operating system to add those characters.
That's your tech news update and there's always more at www.cnet.com.
From our studios in New York I'm Bridget Carey.
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